


I Wanna Push You Down

by idrilsdarkwritings (idrilhadhafang)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Abused Han Solo, Abusive Leia Organa, Abusive Parents, Abusive Relationships, Baby Ben Solo, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Child Abandonment, Child Abuse, Creepy Snoke (Star Wars), Death of Shara Bey, Domestic Violence, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Female-on-Male Violence, Gen, Heavy Angst, Misogyny, POV Ben Solo, Parent Han Solo, Physical Abuse, Pre-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Unhealthy Relationships, because Galaxy of Adventures Leia is awful, honestly kind of AU-ish, on Snoke’s part
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-17
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-10-30 09:38:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17826314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idrilhadhafang/pseuds/idrilsdarkwritings
Summary: Not every marriage is happily ever after.





	I Wanna Push You Down

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Free Space — Violent Behavior
> 
> Disclaimer: I own nothing. 
> 
> Author’s Notes: Title based on the song “Push” by Matchbox 20. 
> 
> Based on this basically turning Leia into a Jerk Sue (trigger warning for violence and possible abuse): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GD0T20oOBOc&t=6s. Seriously, I don’t care that it’s a “kid’s show” — what kind of message is that going to send to little girls? That it’s okay to beat up boys who did nothing wrong? That being an abusive bitch makes you a strong woman? What’s so “un-strong”, stupid ignorant screenwriter, about having women being compassionate and kind as well as take-charge, and non-abusive? Or do Real Women Never Wear Dresses? (I know it’s a trailer, but dear God!)
> 
> I know one other video by another YouTuber accused Leia of also physically abusing Han, but I don’t know if that was a separate comic or what; my memory’s a bit foggy. Anyway, if it is true (I’m hoping they don’t go that far), consider this my response. No one deserves to be abused, and being an abuser knows no genitalia)
> 
> Also, trigger warning for discussion of female-on-male abuse.

The first time that Han actually gets punched in his marriage, it’s in the jaw, and it’s enough that he actually gets knocked to the ground.   
  
It’s not the first time he’s been punched, really. He was punched long before they’d actually gotten married, and yet he’d thought that it was just an isolated incident. She had just escaped the Death Star, definitely had a lot of psychological baggage to go through.   
  
And yet when she punches him here — well, he doesn’t remember what the argument was about, really. He can’t say what kind of argument it was — well, it was pretty bad.   
  
He still didn’t expect her to punch him.   
  
He stumbles to his feet, already feeling the burn of humiliation and shock coming over him. Leia’s actually looking at her hand like she’s not quite comprehending how she could have done this. Han can’t comprehend it either.   
  
***  
  
He stays, if only for their unborn baby, but even then, he can’t help but feel like he’s been pushed from out of the metaphorical frying pan into a really hot fire.   
  
Han’s known the Corellian hells pretty intimately. Pretty literally, actually, considering how he’s actually lived on   
Corellia. He can still remember Lady Proxima in his nightmares, and the matter of running away from myriad pursuers with Qi’ra. (Qi’ra. Kriff, if things hadn’t gone so wrong — but he shouldn’t think about that, even though Leia’s constantly angry at him — )  
  
Leia’s been getting worse. Han can brush it off (in his trying-to-forgive-her mind) as pregnancy hormones, but it seems too simple. It’s like she’s got all this anger inside her from everything her monster of a father did to her bottled up inside — and at the slightest provocation, she can let it free.   
  
(She can be pretty cutting emotionally too, of course. All of it’s interspersed between moments where they can at least be civil to each other. Yeah. For baby Ben’s sake. They’re not relaxed, they’re not loving, they’re just civil. Yeah. Exactly. That’s right)  
  
She isn’t always like this. Sometimes they have better moments. But sometimes Han can’t help but lie awake in the bed that he and Leia don’t share, and wonder what exactly he’s doing wrong.   
  
***  
  
Ben’s earliest memory is hiding in a dark corner while his mother throws a plate at his father, who barely manages to duck in time — it shatters. It looks, Ben thinks idly, almost like blue segments falling around his father. He wants to go and help his father, his mother, but what can he do? He’s two, after all.   
  
His mother’s cursing at his father, calling him a worthless piece of nothing — and Ben is about as lost as what the argument’s about as his father is. After all, mommies and daddies aren’t supposed to hate each other, are they? They’re not supposed to fight, and they’re not supposed to call each other mean names.   
  
_We don’t hit people, Ben._ That was what his uncle said once. But why’s it okay for Mommy to hit Daddy? He doesn’t want that kind of Mommy.   
  
Sometimes Ben wishes he had a normal Mommy. Someone who read stories to him and made him laugh and didn’t hate Daddy. Daddy’s able to do what Mommy can’t. Read him stories, make him laugh. Mommy...  
  
 _She hates you,_ the Voice says. _Despises you. She may put on a good show in public, but she hates you and your Daddy._  
  
“Why?” Ben says weakly.   
  
_That’s what women do,_ says the Voice. _They ensnare you — and then they make sure you can never leave. They’re manipulative, critical, vapid, cruel, and rotten to the core. A man needs a woman like any one of us needs a slash to the face. They’re good at abusing and hurting...but not loving.  
  
Men are better off on their own. _  
  
Looking at how Mommy treats Daddy (who hasn’t even done anything to her), Ben can’t disagree.   
  
***  
  
There’s something about the Dameron house that Ben doesn’t really get to see until he’s older, but he’s amazed at how quiet it really is. Especially seeing how Shara Bey and Kes Dameron interact, Ben notices. He actually braces himself for a minefield being set off — a series of explosions, actually. But there isn’t. Instead, there’s something about Shara and Kes’ interactions that emanates something that makes Ben feel at ease. He’s only a kid, but he can feel it. The Solo family household was so chaotic, almost jagged. The Dameron household is a smooth line.   
  
They never get violent. Indeed, a lot of their interactions are gentle, teasing but never cruel, and Ben can feel the stability between them. The laughter between them is easy, pouring as freely as water from a river. He’s only five, but he can realize that what’s going on at home wasn’t and never will be normal.   
  
He must have been really, really bad to have Mommy hate Daddy like that.   
  
“Mrs. Bey?” he says to Shara, before he leaves.   
  
“Yes, Ben?” She smiles as she speaks. She’s very pretty, Ben thinks; beautiful, actually. She’s got a scar on her eyebrow, but it hardly detracts from how beautiful she is.   
  
“C-can I stay with you forever?"   
  
She smiles again. Then, “I don’t know, Ben. But you can visit as long as you want. We’ll always be here for you."  
  
Ben likes that idea. He just wishes that he could stay forever. Maybe he and Poe could be friends. Friends forever, even!  
  
The Voice would say that there’s no such thing, of course. But Ben wants there to be.   
  
***  
  
The next time the Voice talks about women, Ben has a rebuttal.   
  
“Mrs. Bey isn’t like that!” he says.   
  
_Is she now?_ The Voice takes on a curious, and almost menacing, edge.   
  
“Yeah! She’s...really nice...”  
  
 _Just “nice”? How do you know that’s not a façade? How do you know that there’s nothing rotten underneath?_  
  
Ben bites his lip. “Well...I felt it. She just seems really nice.” A lot like her son. And she’s pretty too. (Mommy could be considered pretty if she wasn’t angry all the time)  
  
 _Did she talk to you?_  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
 _Be wary of her, Ben. Everything that she does could be considered a trick..._  
  
Ben doubts he can picture it, but the Voice is Never Wrong, so he can’t say he knows who to believe.   
  
***  
  
Shara Bey dies long before Ben’s sixth birthday and Poe’s ninth.   
  
Even being at the funeral, Ben can’t help but feel like he’s lost a second mother. His _real_ Mommy. And he can’t help but feel like a horrible son just for thinking that.   
  
(Leia doesn’t say it outright — but Ben can feel it all but radiating off her. She thinks he’s a bad son. A bad son for not looking up to her and her alone. A traitor.)  
  
Ben can comfort himself by imagining Shara’s in the Force now. He can imagine her as a ghost, giving him guidance and nurturing. He can imagine her continue to inspire Poe, and even though people say non-Force-Sensitives don’t have an afterlife, by the stars, he’s hoping. Shara Bey deserves that much.   
  
He turns to Poe, and it’s there that he says, “My uncle says that people who die go into the Force. Mrs. Bey might be with them. She’s still with us, even if you can’t see her.”  
  
Poe looks at him. “Really?”  
  
“Really.” And Ben finds himself telling Poe about the Force. And even watching the rapt look of amazement on Poe’s face, Ben knows full well that it’s all worthwhile.   
  
***  
“Why did you tell Poe about the Force?”  
  
Mommy’s angry. She’s not seethingly angry, but Ben can feel her anger all but boiling beneath the surface, and he’s afraid. “I — I’m sorry!” he says. “I wanted to h-help Poe — ”  
  
“This is what it’s all about?” Mommy says. “Trying to ‘help’ him? What’s so important about him? Nothing.”  
  
“That’s not true!” Poe’s kind and sweet and funny, and he means everything to Ben.   
  
Mommy continues. “This is all about hating your own mother, isn’t it? You see these people as somehow better than me and your father. You want to live with them, you traitorous little creature...”  
  
“I-it’s not like that...”  
  
“You’re just a parasite on their lives!”  
  
Ben doesn’t know what a parasite is, but he’s thinking that it isn’t good.   
  
Mommy continues. “You’re just like your father — a worthless piece of nothing that somehow got brought into my life. Incompetent, ungrateful...”  
  
“I’ll do b-better, Mommy...”  
  
Mommy snorts. “I doubt you can. You’ll always be a disappointment.”  
  
***  
  
She sends him off to Uncle Luke’s Academy. Ben’s relieved, scared for his father, and grieving all in one. Even as the Falcon blasts off, he wants it to come back, but it doesn’t. Instead, Uncle Luke leads him inside, telling him that in the end, it’s for the best. “Your mother’s very sick,” he says.   
  
“Why doesn’t she go to the medic’s if she’s sick?” Ben says.   
  
“Some people don’t want to, some people can’t afford it...there’s a number of reasons.”  
  
Yavin itself...at least he’ll see Poe again. And maybe they’ll be a perfect family one day. Mommy won’t be sick, Daddy won’t be hurt.   
  
Maybe it’ll be all right.   
  
Maybe...


End file.
